What is Scrum?

Scrum is an Agile based development methodology that embraces changes in requirements during the development process.

Doing projects 'Agile' is completely the opposite from doing projects using the traditionale Waterfall-model. At the start of a project all requirements are collected and a timeline is set. The timeline won't change during the project, the requirements may however.

Time has told us that requirements in a project that depends on software development will always change, making it hard (if not impossible) to meet deadlines without the usage of extra resources and money. Scrum has been designed with exactly that in mind, and therefore leaves wide room for changing requirements during the project.

Benefits of doing Scrum

With Scrum a multi disciplinair team works in sprints: a time boxed period from one to four weeks in which a fixed amount of work can be done. During every sprint the full development cycle (implement, test, deploy) is done, leaving the customer with a working application all the time. By making use of lots of communication within the team and with the customer (who is actually part of the team), problems and obstacles are identified in an early stage of the process. Therefore using Scrum there is much more time to move them out of the way and make the project a success.

High value for money

Together with the customer a list of high level requirements is put into a backlog. The backlog is prioritized by the customer and only the requirements with top priority are denoted in more detail. Each individual requirement is denoted as user story: a brief description of what the customer wants, how and why the customer wants it. The team estimates the work needed for each user story and allocates this capacity.

During the sprint the top priority user stories are implemented, resulting in a working application at the end of the sprint. The process then starts over again, where a customer can change its requirements or even add new ones (and omitting obsolete ones). This makes Scrum deliver the highest value for money.

Always a working product/application

At the end of every sprint a working application is available. Making it for the customer to decided if he wants to release what has been made so far or continue with next sprint and release later.

Delivery on time

The length of a sprint and the number of sprints are fixed to the budget at the start of the project. Therefore deadlines are always met. Making it for customers easy to plan ahead.

Want to know more?

Proteon has chosen Scrum because we know that on-time delivery is vital. Offering high value for money and high business value made the choice even more easy. We have certified Scrum Product Owners to help customers get what they want. And because we have high confidence in Scrum, we also use Scrum to plan our internal processes on a daily base. You can find more detailed information on Scrum on the website of the Scrum Alliance.

Contact

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